text:
What happens to the content when a beta site "fails"
I am concerned that Buddhism SE is seemingly running on fumes and wonder whether i should be backing up the content of interest in case of the site's closure.
Thanks.

there doesn't seem to be any conveniently accessible definite repository indicated viz., so perhaps attention to material which Asker might  find of interest might be indicated; and even if is/was such a depository, it could be altered or deleted at discretion. perhaps becoming a tangible example of impermanence.

The traffic (posts per month and views per month) on this site does not appear to have been decreasing since 2017. It declined from 2014 (when the site started) through about 2017, but remained steady or increased slightly since then.
Therefore I don't know about its "running on fumes", though you may be right.

The site's only problematic statistic is "posts per day" (which is why this site is still in "Beta").
I gathered from Meta.SE that:

The same is true of many SE sites (some of which have been in Beta for longer than this one)
SE says they won't close an otherwise healthy Beta site just because of its "posts per day" statistic

That's my summary of these posts on Meta.SE -- the following are quotes from three SE employees:

July 2018:

As discussed in: Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites, just about the only criteria remaining to keep a site open is having enough users (three minimum) willing to step up to Moderate♦ it.
If a site is in decline and doesn't have enough users willing to take care of it, we will typically issue several calls (through a featured meta post) to try and recruit more interest. Failing that, we will post a final site-closure notice announcing the closure date. This will appear as a 'system message' plastered across the top of every page on the site — all the time referring users back to a meta post where they can express interest in keeping it going.
I can't imagine a site going from functional to "final notice" in less than a month; more typically the effort would persist three to five months… or more. Typically you can tell when a site is no longer working because view counts drop, questions go unanswered, and meta community issues go unanswered or never addressed. There is no particular system to reach out to non-users or disconnected users who are no longer participating in the site. If a site is closed, its content is archived through a "data dump" (search meta), or you can typically find specific posts through the Wayback Machine if you are wondering why a link to a post only brings up the final closure notice.

August 2019:

The first major step, Design-independent graduation, was an important change that separated graduation from getting a full-site theme... but this still left sites in limbo that couldn't meet the 10 questions per day metric for graduating.
Around the same time we recognized that "small sites" may never hit that target but they can still be successful sites and they wouldn't be at risk of closure unless they failed to maintain moderation levels to keep spam at bay and the questions on-topic and of good quality. This was a great step towards helping y'all feel that your communities would be safe from closure.

February 2020:

So, unless we stumble upon the usual reasons for shutting down a site — that is, if no one's willing to step up to help moderate it — everything will keep going as usual.

So I think the site can continue to exist, independent of how busy it is, for as long as people are willing to help moderate it.
Therefore so far as I know there are no plans to close it in the near or the foreseeable future.

How would you propose to backup the site's data?
I think the current FAQ topic about the "data dump" on Meta.SE is this one.
As an experiment I downloaded the latest copy of buddhism.stackexchange.com.7z from https://archive.org/details/stackexchange --

It's a 36 Megabyte ZIP file which contains XML files
01/06/2020  03:08         1,933,136 Badges.xml
01/06/2020  03:08        13,973,543 Comments.xml
01/06/2020  03:08       130,082,139 PostHistory.xml
01/06/2020  03:08           484,885 PostLinks.xml
01/06/2020  03:08        60,871,894 Posts.xml
01/06/2020  03:08            29,222 Tags.xml
01/06/2020  03:08         4,714,427 Users.xml
01/06/2020  03:08         8,150,909 Votes.xml
               8 File(s)    220,240,155 bytes

The XML files contain database rows

The schema of these database tables is presumably as defined here -- Database schema documentation for the public data dump and SEDE

Without further processing it's partially but not very readable (it's machine-readable but for a human the answers are not conveniently located near the questions, etc.)

I don't know if there's a user-friendly way -- i.e. software already written -- to convert these to text or to import them into a database with a front end user interface.
I expect there probably is -- probably several such solutions already -- but because I don't expect this site to close without notice, I'm in no hurry to investigate that further.

The above seems to be a data dump only of still-live sites.
This answer from 2014 lists various closed sites, and shows that a link to their data dumps is hosted on their respective Area51 pages.
This answer states that was still true as of 2018.
I don't know what more-recently-closed sites there have been, but I don't doubt their dumps are listed somewhere -- probably on Area51.
The data dump whose link is near the top of the page of the now-closed https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/62811/startups has the same kind of format as for a live site -- i.e. it's a ZIP file which contains XML files.

I hope this helps. Do ask if you have any other questions about this.

I don't have a good way to back up but i know what i would like to save. It's a lot of work to do manually so i hope it doesn't come to that and that you can keep the site alive. Either way i guess notice will be given and there are solutions for this in case of closure.

When uncompressed, it's only 220MB? That's not so much. That's less than the size of a 720p movie in MP4. But it's not surprising considering it's all text. Even images are merely links to imgur. So, if the site is in any risk of closing down, you can probably just backup the contents to Github or some other suitable site. But I don't think it will happen, considering we're doing excellent, according to Buddhism.SE Area51, except in the area of number of questions per day. The number of visits per day is just barely excellent.

@ruben2020 The backup data isn't threaded (e.g. into topics with answers next to questions), formatted (e.g. using CSS), nor online (accessible via the web), nor searchable in the same way. I imagine that software solutions to do this (i.e. which import an SE archive) exist but I haven't looked,, it doesn't seem necessary at the moment.


text:
I was banned for a week for something frightening innocuous
What are the differences between sex cults and the tantric tradition?
One "bad" question or answer over like seven years. What is even bad about it? Do you disagree with what it says, or are you just trying to humiliate me for a lack of references?
I also lost 700 bounty and the wrong answers were given bounty, due to this.

I for one think it was too harsh. I also put a lot of effort into that answer for the bounty. It is imo legitimate question but not a very good one because of the semantics. It would be good if they gave you back the reputation. I don't mind your answer to the question neither, doesn't bother me one bit even tho i don't agree with it.

7 days for basically asking about the particulars of Buddhist sex cults and posting an answer half-heartedly. What happened to just voting down things and they didn't even delete neither the answer nor the question because they don't really violate anything. I think they just banned you because they felt you needed to 'cool down' tbh

It is actually a very interesting act of moderation. Instead of moderating the content they moderate the person. You don't really break any rules but we ban you anyway just because your answer is not good enough? I don't know if there was another reason for this decision and who banned you but i am quite intetested in finding out.

I think you should complain to SE management if it's not settled here

likely to just wind up any site i bring this up in haha. thanks tho @MAGA2020

We are looking for high-quality answers that adhere to the policy on "How to write a good answer".
As seen in the screenshot below, the original posted answer, was lazy and of low-quality/effort.

Try to make an effort to write to the best of your ability when posting questions and answers.
To be fair, banning you for one week without a warning, was too harsh. If it happens again in the future, I will give you a warning.
The reputation and bounty cannot be refunded or undone. That's just how the system works.
If you like, I can offer 700 of my own reputation and place it according to your wishes.
I hope to see you on the site in the future.

i don't see what the original answer shows except a willingness to improve the answer

On what ground do you warn/ban people who give bad answers? what exactly is a bad answer? Is wrong answer a bad answer? If wrong answer isn't in and by itself a bad answer, must the answer look aesthetically pleasing to be good? Would be good to get some clear guidelines on how to make the answers good so we don't all get banned.

@MAGA2020 What's considered "good" and "bad" might usually be assessed/expressed by voting though that's an imperfect measure. A bad answer might merely downvoted or not-upvoted (with a moderator's intervening e.g. to delete it if it seems hostile, off-topic, trolling, disruptive, etc.). Self-answered questions in particular might be unpopular too, unless the OP is careful to fit in with other users' answers etc., and/or to write high-quality questions and answers.

I generally wouldn't suspend a user unless they're exceptionally rude -- or for a pattern of repeated misbehaviour, and then/that only after a warning. In fact according to you I don't suspend users easily enough (but that's a different story).

Is it normal/acceptable to ban people for bad answers? Is it so that 1st you get a warning, then if you keep posting bad answers you get banned?

@MAGA2020 Maybe "it's rare in practice but not impossible in theory on other sites", and, "that's not normal on this site". I'm trying to remember cases where a user account was ever temporarily suspended on this site: if it does ever happen normally -- which is rare but not unheard of -- that more likely to be with a brand-new user, e.g. I might blow away nonsense from an unregistered user and block the user too if it was semi-hostile. That said this isn't supposed to be, "can I write lots of bad answers without being suspended?". Downvoted answers in general aren't very common on this site.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
What to do when there are unrepresentative answers on a question
How do Buddhists that think of karma figuratively do so about rebirth?
I can't say I understand the newer answer, but the first is just a personal opinion that is completely ruled out by centuries of scholarship both western and otherwise.
We do need better / different answers, for the sake of Buddhism tbqh

The question seemed to be asking for people's personal opinions -- and if/given/assuming a non-standard ("not what is ordinarily meant") understanding of the doctrine.
I don't understand the question, but I guess it's on-topic even if it's confused/confusing.
Anyway, given that as a starting point, I don't think we can or need complain about the answers.
If you don't like an answer I'd usually invite you to post a better one -- I'm not sure I can recommend that (i.e. answering it) for this question though, it's not clear to me what the OP is asking -- and also not (don't expect to provide "a better answer") if you're the OP yourself.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Can admins edit comments?
Is someone here editing my comments? That is very creepy and "militant" if so!
I have brought it up with stackexchange in general; I hope it's nothing to do with them.

incidentally, a discussion i was having with a B. academic he asked me to stop cos he thought someone had hacked it. so probably off site. apologies

Recently saw an extremely egregious harsh 'comment' which didn't sound like the Asker, and which has apparently since disappeared, and also noticed an out of context feature in an answer by Asker; please ping/ contact this poster privately, so as to be sure and remain ontopic & in accordance with all site policies. Thank you.

A moderator can do that, yes.
I don't remember doing so recently, but it's not impossible that I might have, there's been a lot to moderate today.
I generally don't -- if a comment needs editing (because it's hostile or something) I'd usually delete it instead.
If you'd like to reference a specific comment which you think might have been edited (post its URL), I can tell you whether somebody edited it.

Edit to add: I found the comment you were asking about. Yes Andrei edited it, changing "strike" to "murder" before answering it. Id don't know why -- maybe he was setting up a more convenient example to answer?
Anyway you deleted that comment.
When you delete a comment then the whole conversation (dialog) tends to stop making sense, people replying to since-deleted comment, so I clean up by deleting the remainder.

https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/41314/how-do-buddhists-that-think-of-karma-figuratively-do-so-about-rebirth the comment to A. i was SURE was just about "striking" [zen] him, not murdering his daughter, i mean... if you can tell me of ANY edits?

lol phew, just creepy haha

Yeah that was a pretty ... ghastly example. The last time I remember editing a comment was here in 2015 -- that taught me it's quite "disorienting" to a user whose comment changes.

it's cool... you know, we may have competing opinions on buddhism, but, being in some sense buddhists -- even if satirical ones -- we are on the same side yeah :)

regrettably, that euphemistically described 'ghastly example' was Extremely pejorative & legally damaging to the person whose name it was deliberately made under, and when it disappeared seemed as censoring of the person whose name it was under; such material triggers internet monitors for illegal webcontent and website bans :(

Regarding subsequent comment dialog deletion, (unless something egregiously objectionable), maybe consider at times, rather than deletion of subsequent dialog, perhaps replacing something removed from within a comment with ~ 'content edited', or replacing a comment with ~ 'comment edited', and leaving possibly beneficial subsequent posts standing. Thank you for your conscientious & ongoing helpful contributions to the site.

@MH Thank you. If don't often censor people, but it's not unusual to delete a comment for one reason or another -- remember that, in theory, Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer.. And if someone deletes their own comment I don't think I should undelete that and replace it with "[comment deleted]" under their name -- I've never seen that done on other SE sites. Most people don't delete their own comments (but some people do sometimes).

Yes, which is very excellent; Thank you for the information about theoretical basis for comments: it seems on SE that comments are often utilised for helpful footnotes; & the possible suggestion wasnotintended re comments deleted by commenters themselves, which is often obvious from context, but rather for followup commenters to nothave to wonder what became of their comments re sitedeleted comments, & also as being anonymous rather than under posters' names; And, necessity of deletion of comments is hopefully unusual on this site anyway! Thank you for your kind & clarifying comment.

@MH Killing is sometimes a topic on this site, in the context of the first precept or karma -- it's not "illegal" in that context. But "ghastly" also means "ghostly" I can imagine the surprise (or horror -- ghostly, or "creepy" as the OP wrote) of writing "strike" (meaning one thing) and seeing your words silently changed to "murder" (meaning another). Not too frightening though, hopefully, after you understand how that might have happened.

I was a bit disappointed nothing was done about this, which I why I left the site - the environment was toxic. and from a sincere person - let alone self defined enlightened being - really weird.


text:
Is there a question limit, or is moderator just browbeating me?
Is there a question limit, or is moderator just browbeating me? I asked three questions this evening, in about 6 hours. I thought that would be OK?

Right then.
If there were a simple limit, written somewhere in the Help or the Terms of Service, then I'd point you to that -- but there isn't. So I need to give you a slightly longer answer.
If a user misbehaves somehow, moderators should and can send a formal "moderator message" -- to ask the user to stop (a moderator will normally use a simple comment to ask, first, before sending a more formal "moderator message").. There are various different messages, a dozen of them, prewritten by Stack Exchange, to use for different circumstances (i.e. different types of unwanted behaviour) -- scenarios like "excessive comments", "abusive to others", "sockpuppet upvoting", and so on.
The pre-written message which seems to best fit this scenario is:

consistently low quality questions over time
We're writing in reference to your Buddhism Stack Exchange account:
We've noticed that you've asked many questions, a large number of
which were not well received by other members of our community.
Specifically, many of your questions were downvoted and closed because
they seemed to be hastily written, or of the type that we'd prefer
users refrain from
asking. This is a
troubling pattern; we'd like to make sure that you've read the help
that we have available for asking questions. Please take some time to
read all of the information linked below prior to asking another
question:

An overview of how our system works
A brief guide on how to ask questions
A short summary of questions we permit
Help on formatting your questions

We recommend taking a look at highly upvoted questions within the tags
that interest you as examples of how to ask better questions. We
really want you to have a good experience here, and the first step to
that is making sure that your questions are clear, on topic and
provide all of the information someone would need to answer.

The links in that message aren't necessarily especially helpful -- not very "constructive criticism" or prescriptive, won't really help you write a good question for this site -- it is just a prewritten template available to moderators of every SE site.
Still the fact that the message exists implies to be that there is such a thing as "too many questions", or, "a question limit". Or more specifically, that the following is something which the network wants users to avoid, and expects moderators to keep a lid on somehow:

We've noticed that you've asked many questions, a large number of
which were not well received by other members of our community.
Specifically, many of your questions were downvoted and closed because
they seemed to be hastily written, or of the [type that we'd prefer
users refrain from asking.

The early users of this site who helped to define the policies on Meta wanted the Moderation policies for Questions to be unusually tolerant -- and so it is, it has been, compared with other SE sites.
I don't want to complain and tell you that you ask bad questions, but it's true that I for one find your questions difficult to understand for various reasons and I can't tell why you're asking them. If they're not especially "good" (i.e. "well-received") questions, perhaps you could at least limit the rate at which you ask them (possibly also taking time to prepare them more carefully, to make them more obviously understandable and important, i.e. worth trying to ask and answer).
I've no idea how many is "too many". This is only a small SE site with little traffic, as you know, so all regular users certainly notice every question. If you post every day and if every post is a bit annoying that's perhaps too often. I imagined (personal opinion) that posting a couple of times a week isn't too  many, is easy for someone to ignore if they do find it annoying.
At this moment, 5 of the most recent 7 questions on the site are yours -- it's kind of noticeable, hard to ignore.
You have asked 300 questions in total -- half of them have no upvotes at all.
Sorry to be brief. I don't have time to discuss this in detail but perhaps I answered your question. I'm about to be offline for several days now probably, hopefully Andrei will be able to moderate this site alone for bit.

while my questions often aren't especially iin the flavour of this site, i don't think they are a poor fit for it.

Actually there is a technical limitation by the owner implemented, limiting to 40 min a post, at least for not registered, Nyom.


text:
Don't ask unless Moderators don't feel disturbed a Mohayana rule?
Moderator Andrei Vollkov wrote:

Users are advised to limit their asking activity to one question a day to avoid flooding the home page with their content.

Aside of the circumstance that Volkov is surely not given to advice even anybody, not to speak that one would hardly ask, what's the matter with goining against the page owners policy to serve personal preferences?
Using an enviroment for ones living and entertaining and activily going against it's purpose and owners wishes. Grave lack of gratitude and feeling obligated? Is that what Mohayana teaches their disciples: backyard-dictatorshipism?
Does he like to give a sample of how duty and gratitude should be understood? Secret message?
BSE-Glosary:

Off-topic because… - each community decides which specific topics are and are not allowed on their site. You can see this list of off-topic subjects for this site by viewing this help center article.

This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.

If you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope, consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement.

One may decide whether such is a mental, dhammic, on-topic (metta-issue) or a meta-thing and move on accordingly.
[Note that this isn't given for stacks, exchange and other worldy trades but to escape from it]

I’m voting to close this question because This question does not appear to be about Buddhist philosophy, teaching, and practice, within the scope defined in the help center.

I would give a moderator a thumb up anyway .. to review so many questions is not an easy with high level of Buddhism knowledge and what i know "true" Buddhist now become less and less.  i guess it's not a  paid job by the way.

Why am i seeing this? This is a meta question... Also please use a translator, this unintelligible language is not suited for public discourse imo. Perhaps if your content was intelligible you would be allowed to post more.

Moderator, seeing it's actually a meta topic, could move it there, but since actually not lokking for moderate but to domain, leaving it here to be not a serious matter.

'Why am i seeing this?' = vipaka

We (the moderators of this site) try to implement the policies of SE, and the specific policies of this site -- there are not specifically "Mahayana" or "Theravada" rules.
We learned these policies from SE, and from this site's community -- and we evolved and practised them over the last 6 years or so -- to handle (or more usually, to allow) various normal situations and a few less usual edge-cases.
I also tried to document many of the most important policies using the faq tag.
Our policy about rate-limiting questions is one which I tried to explain here -- Is there a question limit, or is moderator just browbeating me?
I think that other SE sites don't normally define a limit based on the quantity of questions, but instead have policies based on quality -- i.e. a user can ask unlimited high-quality questions, but low-quality questions are closed.
The quality standard for questions on this site is different from SE's usual -- the standard here is almost non-existent, see the Moderation policies for Questions -- instead this site's community wanted to allow almost all questions. And so, moderators instead evolved a policy to limit the rate at which each user asks questions -- that's to avoid any single user's flooding the site's front/active page (flooding it with potentially low-quality questions).
As Andrei suggested, asking one question per day at most ought to be more enough (I think even two a week might be enough and not too many).
Also, you should probably know, some types of question aren't allowed at all:

Questions about policies and moderation of this site -- ask those here on Meta not on the main site
Questions (or answers or comments) intended as personal criticism or rebuke of other users -- that is not what this site is for at all, and would be edited or deleted


text:
Whom would you like to ask to help moderating here on BSE?
Since it's a tradition where task are asked by those who grateful like to make use of others sacrifices, and not a marxist tradition, good householder are possible good encouraged to ask and invite those you would wish to certain parenting your space of Dhammic feed for many peoples luck and prosperty.
Good people wouldn't take care of cattles, yet not even their own. An Jains wouldn't dear to eat their choice and 'selfless' pigs.
So maybe worthy to answer, after having been moved into meta-space.
"Whom would you like to ask to help moderating here on BSE?"
[Note that this isn't given for stacks, exchanges, worldbinding trades or entertainment, but for an release from this wheel]

Actually, in this case, in this situation, it would be proper letting go of the tool of voting. It would be the most proper way, if their manager would allow it (possible nobody even knows him...) to go by themselves on search of who could assist, help them. Once found and asked, maybe two, as a matter of respect and care, the elders (moderators, those who actually did the work and sacrificed a lot) might either give those candidates for election, or better, if having found one skilled in Dhamma, skilled in conduct, ask the community for whether there would be a reason not to invite X to assist in the hard work. If fine, fine. If feeling problematic this 'authoritative' act, then go for search for another.
If even such ways are not to grasp by the people who make use, day in, day out: don't wast your time: nothing worthy to gain care for people not aware of goodness, not feeling obligated, not having roots of proper gratitude: the all are equal lost.
[Note that this isn't given for stacks, exchanges, worldbinding trades or entertainment, but for an release from this wheel]

Are you answering your own question using an account with your name reversed?

The way you describe it, i.e. asking people to help, asking the community "who would you like to ask?", is approximately what happened last time -- see here (in 2015), where several people were invited.
This time the process starts by asking, "who would volunteer?" i.e. "who would be willing to accept if they are invited?"

It was a good way and it would be good if you here stick with that mode of "ancestor" fist, and conscious handing over ones heritate. Selfnominating is total risky in a lazy community and can also lead to great disappointed in cases a generous person, willing to sacrifice, is't recognized, welcomed and supported. Democracy is only in less cases a tool and actually one of the last. And of course, if a 'culture' doesn't have proper heirs, better to let it die than to make heritage open to all kinds of misuse, good householder.

As actually father her, it's good that good householder knows his position and even if some criticize, may Nyom go on for good. May he also be well recognized by his 'manager', for them my person traces as the most irresponsible chains in this Brahma-realm. And again, good if the householders try to get BSE out of the commercial interests, and as economical not interesting, maybe the owner is ready for great merits. Then, in this case, you could optimize it to ways of the Noble Ones and their follower, rather then celebrating the Uposata of the Cowards or Jains, like now.

And, if looking for one in your team, try to look after a better, which might need sacrifices, but helps good householder in grow.

What about Upasaka Karl? He might be at your age and obiviously has Silas. My person got known a small communityx with a knowledgeable Lay-leader with first right view, from Sri Lanka. Maybe approach also him, since most here are not from old background and marxism hardly dominates (incl of course mainlands, German, France, Russian) https://forum.sangham.net/index.php?topic=10012.0 (nick Maharaja)

Atma trust that Nyom works on and looks after every good hole the get his good baby well grown according to it's nature.

@SamanaJohann Thank you for your kind advice. I am happy that ruben2020 chose to volunteer. If I had been asked to do so, I would have invited ruben2020 -- who has been a member of this site for more than six years, who participates regularly, who has never tangled with another user, and who has been somewhat active here on Meta too i.e. shown an interest in and understanding of how the site's community makes decisions. I may remember your suggesting Karl, as well, if in future the site must find another moderator.

How ever Nyom thinks it's good for him and all, and mudita. Nothing must, and sites do not anything fatzzzz.. (beating with a bamboo stick, since unverbesserlich kommunistisch...)

It's good now to walk on and leave. Sadhu for all your good efforts, past, present and in the future.

I could have written, "If the site's community is looking for", or, "If I am looking for". But I wrote, "If the site must find", because it's necessary for the existence of the site -- the Stack Exchange managers do not allow a site to exist (or continue to exist), unless some members of that site's community (i.e. users of the site) are willing to act as moderators for it. Thank you again for your advice, Samana Johann.

Id like Wes Watson to moderate


text:
Censoring the Zen tradition
I'm a bit dumbfounded as to why the mods deleted my comments in this chat.  Koans are part of the Rinzai canon.  Deleting them is favoring one sect over another.
https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/117255/discussion-between-the-tech-expert-guy-and-user20010

@terdon resolved this.  Still, I think it points to an identifiable problem - mods from other stacks shouldn't be able to block content on sites they know nothing about.

I flagged it as offensive since it talked about ending the life of the Buddha and some other offensive stuff. I'm a Buddhist and that's why I flagged them as offensive. So it's not censoring. However, I'd love to have @ruben2020's opinion.

authors: Баян Купи-ка


text:
What about comparative questions that require non-site specific expertise?
I have found a somewhat similar discussion here;
'Comparative religion' questions
Can we ban "comparative-religion" questions?
However i want to direct attention to a broader range of questions such as these;
Buddhist Brahmachariya, Brahmin Brahmachariya, celibacy, chastity (compares early buddhist ideas to pre buddhist vedic stuff)
Buddhist origin of tobacco and its relation to Native American use (assumes people know about native american stuff)
How is the Cognitive Process described according to Buddhism? How does it relate to modern Cognitive Psychology? (assumes we have psych degrees)
The general theme being a request for comparative analysis of two separate fields of study.
Other examples would be;

How does Buddhism's something relate to Black Holes?
How does Buddhism relate to Neuroscience?
Does Kundalini Yoga lead to Nirvana?

I personally think that a person interested in studying ie physics and buddhist studies should ask about buddhisms here and physics on the physics site.
I do think that there are exceptional circumstances;

the non-site specific field of knowledge is something that is expected to be common knowledge
the questioneer can consisely & accurately explain what he wants to compare Buddhism to and does not risk misreprepresenting the truth about either field.  IE "If i recall correctly a person said X, this is how i understood it, would this be in line with any of the Buddhisms?"
"How does Theravadin Buddhism relate to Mahayana Buddhism?" Even tho the two are considered to be different religions by many, i think this should be allowed because this is basically a controversy that arose in regards to Buddhism and people here can be expected to have this knowledge.

I don't think these questions are fit for this site as they are generally prone to misrepresenting the truth when asked and getting unreliable answers due to a lack of peer-review (Ie i think one could post about physics here what would've been snapdeleted at SEPhysics).

I sympathize -- I don't like seeing Physics being misrepresented (see "Quantum woo" for example).
But one of the reasons for bewaring comparative religion questions isn't only that the answer might be ignorant or wrong, but that it (i.e. misrepresenting a religion) might be taken as "offensive" or "hostile". Implying that Christianity (for example) is in some way not as good as Buddhism might be taken as a "subtle put-downs or unfriendly language", which the Code of Conduct cautions us against (and it should IMO go without saying).
That's also true in questions which ask for comparisons between schools: perhaps they're OK in theory and shouldn't be banned categorically, but ought to be asked and answered carefully (so as not to invite hostility, nor to be hostile).
Apparently the proper remedy for an answer that's merely wrong or ignorant (rather than outright hostile) is a down-vote, not a deletion.
Also "expected to be common knowledge" is too strict. Expert-level questions, and questions that can only be answered from personal experience, are OK -- and not everyone has the same level of expertise and same personal experience.
And you third example ("How does Theravadin Buddhism relate to Mahayana Buddhism?") contradicts your second rule ("concisely and accurately explain what he wants to compare"). The Moderation policies for Questions doesn't forbid comparisons: it forbids, "Broad comparisons".

Appreciate your input. As to "How does Theravadin Buddhism relate to Mahayana Buddhism" being contradictory, it was an altogether exception among the exceptions and therefore i listed it classed as "exceptional circumstances".

I think this question is fit to be allowed here because these are exact questions a newbie might ask and here i would actually much rather see a broad comparison than a deep comparative analysis which might misrepresent & offend either. I would prefer fact based answers in that case as commonly agreed upon statements.

What is the difference between Buddhism, Hinduism and Solipsism?
Another example of a question that belongs just as much or just as little on a SEHinduism or SEPhilosophy ...
Close them when you see them.


text:
Would this question be OK
It may come off as truculent or trolling, but I'm genuinely interested!
In what way is Buddhism different in the West and in traditionally Buddhist nations?
Thanks

Can you make the question more specific? It seems to me there's quite a variety of "Buddhism" in any country -- e.g. perhaps some difference between ordained and lay...
Then an even greater variety between for example Vietnam and China.
And differences -- and similarities -- between East and West.
What do you want to know?
I guess the most obvious difference between countries is a difference in the languages; but even that's not so because a lot of Buddhism-in-the-West is immigrants who retain their original languages.
I found this question unanswerable. I assume it was prompted by something specific or personal, but you disguised that by phrasing it as a general question, so much so that I couldn't tell what you were asking.

i've lodged an edit to that question. not all difficult questions are a bad fit for stackexchnage! i think that's important

yeah it's too open ended. i guess i was asking about a lack of seriousness, leadership, etc. in the west, but i don't know how to phrase it in one go

"i don't know how to phrase it in one go" Yes that keeps me from asking a lot of questions about Mahayana: I don't know what to ask, how to begin! So a figure I need to study a bit, learn something, so that I have something specific to ask about. Then I try that and what I read seems surprisingly understandable, so I still don't have questions.

OK Chris, i may do that

You wrote, "not all difficult questions are a bad fit for stackexchnage!".
The Help says,

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

Maybe a lot of users don't know that Help text -- and the Help does say the same for every Stack Exchange site, not only Buddhism.SE, even though each site has its own customs about what's on-topic -- nevertheless I think it's quite good advice about what makes for an answerable question.
A lot of question here are theoretical -- even they tend to be specific and about, "an actual problem that you face" -- for example, "I'm reading this [quoted bit of scripture] and I don't understand what this bit means?", or something like that.
Or "practical" questions like, "I have such-and-such problem with my life or practice?", or, "How do you do X?", etc.

i was talking about a question that is not very broad


text:
I suggest moderators to be allowed to rule on what is and isn't Buddhism
There was recently a discussion about an answer not being "Buddhist", here in the commentary:
https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/44281/8527
I said that under the current policy moderators should not judge what is and isn't Buddhism.
Andrei cared to provide his take on this and as i understood his comments, he appealed to "common sense":

The side that thinks that posting any answer is okay as long as it's well-intended should try and provide at least some connections to a teaching of any mainstream school of Buddhism.

That might look good but what constitutes "some connection to any mainstream school of Buddhism"?
As far as i can see, in practice, any alleged connection qualifies as "some connection" here atp.
Currently moderators might ask for substantiation and delete an answer if no substantiation is given. There are, afaik, no requirements which a substantiation has to meet.
This is how it works out in practice:
There is a user here who basically holds that half of the earliest texts is fake and the other half is mistranslated.
This person is definitely not aligned with any school.
However because this person can dig up a verse or a line of verse & offer his subjective interpretation/tanslation of said verse and on that basis he is allowed to post.
Basically a moderator might ask for substantiation but has no authority to rule on the validity of provided evidence.
Therefore i suggest that the duly elected moderators should be allowed & required to make these judgement calls.
If not then then i suggest they stop asking for substantiations. Just let people post whatever because the current policy disfranchises new users who aren't familiar & savvy enough to fend off the moderator's bluff and that whilst giving a free pass to anybody savvy enough (doesn't take much obviously) to post whatever nonsense they want eg:

rebirth is superstition
killing is a trifling deed
loose women are hungry ghosts
devas & gods are aristocrats
nirodha means process
digha nikaya is mostly fake

Saying the belief "rebirth is superstition" is nonsense isn't very nice. Saying "rebirth is superstition" might be false in the context of buddhism, but for people with different beliefs than you it most certainly isn't nonsense.

Here, we are focusing on answers and not questions.
The moderators will definitely delete answers which are:

Spam
Rude and abusive content - this may include rude criticism of other Buddhist schools
Not an answer - usually meant as a comment, or a new question, or it is completely unrelated to the question (e.g. question asks about meditation and the answer literally talks about Buddha statues)
Clearly off-topic - e.g. 100% Christian preaching or 100% Muslim preaching
Very low quality and unsalvageable - severe formatting or content issues like completely unintelligible posts, rambling, gibberish

All non-deleted answers are expected to:

Not meet the answer deletion criteria mentioned above (i.e. spam, rude and abusive content, not an answer, clearly off-topic, very low quality and unsalvageable)
Be on-topic i.e. most or all of the answer is related to any mainstream school or tradition of Buddhism (including Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana and sub-schools like Zen, Pure Land, Ch'an, Madhyamaka, Yogachara, Sarvastivada, Sautrantika, Kagyu, Nyingma, Dzogchen, Nichiren, Secular Buddhism etc.)

All on-topic answers which are technically wrong or inaccurate should be downvoted and not deleted. The Stack Exchange policies are quoted below.
According to this Meta SE answer for the question "How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion?", the criteria for answer deletion is:

For answers, any post that is not an answer (should be a comment,
doesn't answer the question, etc.) should be deleted. Answers that are
wrong or that dispense poor advice should be downvoted, not deleted.
These are general guidelines; some communities in the network may
uphold more specific reasons to delete posts or not. For example, on
Puzzling.SE, answers to a puzzle without explanation are subject to
deletion, and some technical sites will delete answers which are not
only wrong but also harmful when tried.

So, this means we can add additional criteria for deletion, if we have extremely good reasons.
Also, according to this Meta SE answer for the question "Why shouldn't I delete wrong answers?":

"Wrong" as in "completely unrelated to the question"? Go ahead and
delete those.
"Wrong" as in "yes, that will solve the problem, but that's a bad
idea"? Those should be downvoted. Think of it as a lesson - showing a
bad solution can be helpful as well, especially if it's an obvious
solution that others may gravitate towards and/or when accompanied by
an explanation (say, in a comment) of why it's a bad solution.
"Wrong" as in "this doesn't solve the issue, but it an obvious attempt
at providing a solution" is trickier. The appropriate action here
would depend on what the answer actually was. In most cases, I would
go with downvoting as well or, frankly, not voting at all.

What is a good answer that should be upvoted?

Technically on-topic, correct and accurate, with elaboration
Addresses and answers all parts of the question
Related to the tags of the question. For e.g. if the question's tags include only theravada and pali-canon, then the questioner limits the scope to Theravada and Pali Canon only.
Preferably substantiated using scriptural quotes or commentaries or the opinion of experts, but this is not strictly required as the poster could answer using his or her experience and expertise. Please see this answer for the Buddhism Meta SE question "Is “opinion based” a reason for closing a question?"
Answers to questions requesting for references (and tagged using reference-request) should include relevant references

Adding comments from moderator Andrei Volkov to this answer:

It is not our job to police what is and what is not real Buddhism.
However when an answer is completely off topic (for example someone
posts a Christian-only answer which by itself may be perfect, just not
on topic on this site) then we agreed to try and ask the poster to add
some connections to Buddhism or delete the answer. Just a matter of
common sense, right? In this case we were on the fence, it may or may
not be on topic, which is why I asked it as a question and the other
moderator used the word "seems". Other users were less careful with
words.
Let's try and resolve this peacefully by making concessions from both
ends. The side that considers these things not Buddhism should try and
keep their minds open for other opinions. The side that thinks that
posting any answer is okay as long as it's well-intended should try
and provide at least some connections to a teaching of any mainstream
school of Buddhism. It will help everyone to avoid these
misunderstandings. Thank you all.

To some extent, moderators do rule on what is and isn't Buddhism -- for example:

If an answer quoted Ram Dass or the Bible as an authority, I'd tend to delete that on the basis that these aren't considered and doesn't claim to be Buddhist. But that doesn't happen often.
Even more rarely (and infamously) a moderator might delete some answers for being overly based on an understanding of Mathematics or something like that, instead of being based on Buddhism.

But when the site started, users worried about the site's becoming too sectarian. And so we DON'T say, for example, "If it's not based on the Pali texts then it's not Buddhism". Instead the rule is that if a group self-identifies as Buddhist -- if "Zen" for example calls itself "Zen Buddhism" -- then it's on-topic on this site.
I guess there are generally several categories of questionable answer; and our policies for these, based on the various FAQs and Help topics, are:

Policy

1. Rude or hostile
That is something for moderators to judge, and delete or edit

2. Doesn't answer the question
If it might be trying to answer the question then I generally won't intervene, unless and until the community downvotes

3. Based on a non-Buddhist reference
That's something for moderators to delete

4. Based on no reference at all
That's probably not deleted, but may have a comment or post notice added -- note that references aren't required on this site

5. Based on a Buddhist reference but reach a wrong conclusion

It's the last category though, i.e. #5, that seems to be what you're mostly talking about -- where you're saying that moderators should delete a "wrong answer" as "non-Buddhist".

But that's contrary to normal Stack Exchange guidelines, which say that a wrong answer shouldn't be flagged (for moderator attention) and should instead be down-voted.
It's also contrary to what the community wanted when this site was started -- i.e. moderators shouldn't be ruling on whether an answer is orthodox.

There have also been (other, later) users who feel that the moderators don't do a good job, in fact that the wrong people are chosen to be moderators -- they argued that the moderators should be senior Buddhists, perhaps ordained people, able to rule on what's orthodox or acceptable; and/or that moderators should consult with venerables to decide what content is good. But that's not what happens on this site.
It's kind of people (I assume it's kind of you, you being kind) to stay and contribute answers that other people might find helpful.
There's no way to guarantee that everyone (else) will only post answers which everyone (you) will agree with.

Duty Calls

What do you want me to do?  LEAVE?  Then they'll keep being wrong!

So I think the SE model is to permit several independent answers to any question, and to minimize friction (e.g. extended arguments in comments) and hostility.
Other SE sites assume that readers -- individuals who ask and answer questions, and the community who review answers -- have ways to decide for themselves whether any answer  is "useful". But that's not the job of moderators:

A lot of the moderation work is mundane: deleting obvious spam, closing blatantly off-topic questions, and culling some of the worst-rated posts on the site. The ideal moderator does as little as possible ...

It's also true what you say, that experienced users will learn to post in a way that doesn't get deleted or suspended by moderators. From my selfish perspective -- i.e. as a moderator who wants to do little -- that's actually something of an improvement, i.e. compared to posts which must be deleted or which require the user to be suspended.

In regards to this: "It's also true what you say, that experienced users will learn to post in a way that doesn't get deleted or suspended by moderators. From my selfish perspective -- i.e. as a moderator who wants to do little -- that's actually something of an improvement, i.e. compared to posts which must be deleted or which require the user to be suspended."

Do you not realize that these people are the most destructive to the community? Not only do they give wrong advice but they appear authoritative to those who are new and fuck up the process by which a new [unlearned] person develops expertise as to become a valuable asset to the community which makes those learners even more taxing than they ought to be on the community.

In the end you get discord in the community, wrong answers from low/wrong information members challenge experts who are of course the backbone of the community. This will eventually drive the experts away, not create new experts and effectively ruin your community.

Am i missing something or what? Seems like an obvious problem if a user is able to do this.

When there is discord like this you make sure that Ariya will eventually leave, see precedent in the Sutta https://suttacentral.net/an5.166/en/sujato

@8527 I seem to read a slightly different message in that the sutta -- that an Ariya will speak, and if someone simply but repeatedly contradicts what they say then they won't argue; that the Buddha may reprove someone; and that someone ought to feel compassion (and not just watch it happen), if someone is being harassed. Be that as it may (interpreting the sutta) I interpret my job as being to keep users from harassing each other. The way SE is formatted, each answer independently focuses on answering the original question -- not a "discussion", with some focus on contradicting other answers.


text:
Is puthujjana used as a pejorative on this site? Should that be allowed or should it be moderated?
I've noticed that often times on this site the term 'puthujjana' is being used as a pejorative in answers to passive aggressively insult others. Have others also noticed this? If so, should it be allowed or should it be moderated?
Personally, I think it should be moderated when the intent to use 'puthujjana' as a pejorative is clear. The hallmarks of such a usage are an answer where the poster uses 'puthujjana' to refer to anyone who disagrees with the posters assertions about dhamma and then uses self-aggrandizing terms to refer to themself.

The term "puthujjana" by itself is not a pejorative but it may have been used as a pejorative by some users.
Please see the Buddhism SE Code of Conduct which says the following on Unacceptable Behavior. If you see such unacceptable behavior, please flag the post, and the moderators will look into it. Thank you for your support.

Unacceptable Behavior
No subtle put-downs or unfriendly language.
Even if you don’t
intend it, this can have a negative impact on others.
No name-calling or personal attacks.
Focus on the content, not
the person. This includes terms that feel personal even when they're
applied to content (e.g. “lazy”).
No bigotry.
We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or
alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion
— and those are just a few examples. Use stated pronouns (when known).
When in doubt, don't use language that might offend or alienate.
No harassment.
This includes, but isn’t limited to: bullying,
intimidation, vulgar language, direct or indirect threats, sexually
suggestive remarks, patterns of inappropriate social contact, and
sustained disruptions of discussion.

The Dhamma should be taught with the thought, 'I will speak without hurting myself or others.'

According to the Commentary, "hurting oneself" means exalting oneself. "Hurting others" means putting other people down.

One should know what it is to extol and what it is to disparage, and knowing both, one should neither extol nor disparage but should teach only the Dhamma.’

I like this line,

Focus on the content, not the person.

I think people are here to answer questions about (and discuss) doctrine ... not to discuss each other.
It reminds me of a joke about Oscar Wilde:

Wilde claimed he could discuss any subject at any time prepared or not. A companion once took him up on this claim, asking that he discourse on the subject of “The Queen.” Responded Wilde: “The queen is not a subject.”

It's similar to the reason for there being a separate Meta site -- i.e. that discussing the site itself as a topic may be a boring subject for most users.
I take it that the term becomes pejorative if and when it's applied -- explicitly or implicitly to other users. It's not the term that's necessarily pejorative but its application. And whether or not such an application is accurate -- which may be debatable -- I think it's off-topic and potentially "Unacceptable Behavior".

Re. "using self-aggrandizing terms to refer to themself", one of the FAQs says here,

In general, unless you actually are the questioner's teacher, don't assume a teacher's mantle.

That was written in slightly different context (its context was, "just answer the question"), but it was highly upvoted and I think was good advice too. I gather that "asserting yourself to be superior" is canonically a form of conceit and a source of dispute, and I'd generally rather that users avoid disputes and sources of dispute.

I would say that assuming a teachers mantle or asserting yourself to be superior is also just unskillful. I'd assert that rarely is the time when a true Realized One would come on an internet forum and proclaim themselves thus in a skillful way in order to best direct lowly beings.


text:
Does editing questions affect their position in the feed?
I've edited a question simply to put the title in lower case, and I noticed that the question appeared atop the home page for Buddhism. Am I to understand that every time I'd edit a question, it would resurface in the question feed? Should I avoid such edits?

Does editing questions affect their position in the feed? Am I to understand that every time I'd edit a question, it would resurface in the question feed?

Yes, it does. It will bring it to the top of the feed.

Should I avoid such edits?

If those edits are good and helpful, and does not misrepresent, or diverge from, the intentions of the original author of the post, then you may do so.
For e.g. corrections of spelling, grammar and formatting are always welcomed.


text:
I think the community should use the Theravada/Mahayana tag more if they don't want fringe answers
Basically, as the title says.
I think people should be made aware that if they don't tag their questions then they expose themselves to particularly controversial answers.

If the OP wants answers specific to the Theravada tradition, then he or she has to use the Theravada tag.
If an answer can even be narrowly or marginally interpreted as being related to the tags, then it will not be deleted by the moderators.
If a user feels that such an answer is technically wrong or inaccurate, then he or she should downvote it. Please see this answer for references to SE policies on this.
For e.g. we had one answer which argued that anicca meant "insatiable" rather than "impermanent", but this answer was downvoted and not deleted, because it is at least marginally related to Theravada, but the majority considered it to be wrong or inaccurate or unorthodox.
On the other hand, a hypothetical answer that states "there's no such being as the Manjushri Bodhisattva according to the Pali Canon", for a question on Manjushri which is tagged Mahayana or Tibetan-Buddhism, would be clearly off-topic to this tag, and may be deleted by the moderators.
This moderation policy is different to SuttaCentral, which considers "Anicca doesn’t mean impermanence" to be an extremist view that may cause the user to be banned. On BSE so far, we do not have a policy for moderators to judge whether an answer is technically correct or accurate or orthodox. This is to be judged by the community using votes.

I tried to make the site policies accessible by writing FAQ index (summary of site policies) -- which mentions using tags.
If you want to make people aware, you can -- the only way I know to do that might be to post a comment under the question, maybe referencing a meta-topic, and IMO preferably phrased as offering information (e.g. "If you want X, you can Y"), or phrased as a question ("Did you want X? Because if so..."), instead of giving orders or making demands or criticising (e.g. "You ought to..."), to be welcoming.
Sometimes I ask if they want answers from a specific school, and sometimes they reply they're open to answers from any school.

I think people should be made aware that if they don't tag their questions then they expose themselves to particularly controversial answers.

Remember, it isn't for moderators to police whether an answer is orthodox or correct -- that's for users to vote on.
As moderator I might delete an answer which "doesn't answer the question" if (only if) it's downvoted -- or if I can tell from the nouns it's using that it's objectively off-topic, like if it's posting about "Jesus" or something.
Maybe the most useful tag for what you want would be reference-request -- that tag requires that every answer must be, at least, backed by references. In that case a moderator can see "objectively" whether an answer has references -- a hyperlink or citation and a block-quote -- and delete it if not.
That won't guarantee that you agree but at least exposes some basis for the answer -- it may help the reader assess whether the answer is a "good" one -- and, perhaps even more usefully, provide references which the reader can use to read more of the subject themselves.


text:
Importance of boundaries for community building
A community needs experts to thrive, these are few and far in between.
Occasionally i see new users who seem to know a lot and are experts or knowledgeable contributors.
Then i see some rude person who is a straight idiot and a troll abuse or harrass him, insult or make fun of his beliefs in afterlife or some fundamental aspect of what is commonly held as dogma.
It doesn't surprise me if people are turned off from participation on that account. I do think it is important to shut out users who only post garbage or close to it.
If flags are raised over a user's posts constantly and you remove a dozen of offensive posts when the user is returning after a 10th(?) temporary ban..
Are you waiting for a person to make death threats or what exactly is the treshold in these cases because it is the biggest vulnerability to this community at this point imo.
Also about this particular user, i am already keeping a log of his behavior on this and DW site and can already show that this is about all this guy does and you are enabling the destruction of this community knowing that a high % of his posts will be flagged as derogatory & abusive and will certainly be against TOS.
I will require someone to look on this eventually and when i think we can maybe have you all removed as moderators on that account.
Here a teaser; https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=35643
I don't know what's wrong with you moderators... but something is off horribly.
I think your judgement is corrupted or flawed here somehow. The community can grow very well without any single 1 person but it can't grow as well as it could have if your shitty judgement & hesitance to enforce site rules turn this into a place where people are effectively routinely harrassed with moderator's blessing.

To help me understand, what was the immediate/recent cause of this post? I thought it might have been the answers to this question of yours, but that was posted 40 minutes after this.

Incidentally the link to the avatar in your user profile is broken -- https://graph.facebook.com/10154029109160845/picture?type=large -- maybe you can see it but I get this reply -- {    "error": {       "message": "An access token is required to request this resource.",       "type": "OAuthException",       "code": 104,       "fbtrace_id": "A-bNlerUNFv46FkuAYGTivB"    } } -- so might want to use a picture that's hosted somewhere else.

As to what prompted. I thought it would be appropriate to occasionally draw attention to this issue and to be involved in the development of the community. I think that if the site is well regulated it will be more suitable for the kind of people we want

I'm not sure about your "already keeping a log of his behavior" -- that might not help at all.
On SE all a user's flagged posts, and all their suspensions, are recorded -- and that record is visible to moderators, as well as to SE staff if or when they want to look.

It doesn't surprise me if people are turned off from participation on that account. I do think it is important to shut out users who only post garbage or close to it.

I agree, with being concerned about users' (and new users', and regular users') perceptions of the site -- and whether they're "turned off from participation on that account".
I'm not sure the premise is accurate -- i.e. "only post garbage or close to it" -- though it may be that (garbage) is what you find memorable or leaves a strong impression.
It also worries me that even a single user, and especially if they're established and prolific, might have an out-sized effect on how other users view the site.

this is about all this guy does and you are enabling the destruction of this community knowing that a high % of his posts will be flagged as derogatory & abusive and will certainly be against TOS

If the user in question is one of the site's "highest-reputation" users, that's some objective evidence (by SE metrics) that they're not only prolific but also often helpful or useful -- welcome.

Are you waiting for a person to make death threats or what exactly is the treshold in these cases because it is the biggest vulnerability to this community at this point imo.

"What exactly is the threshold" is a subject or topic of these scenarios for what that's worth.

I think your judgement is corrupted or flawed here somehow.

Yes.
More than one moderator is reluctant to perma-ban the user or delete their account, though I believe I see at least some of the arguments on both sides (for and against).

Moderators agree that, at a minimum, posts may be edited or deleted -- and as you know, you can (if you're willing) help us do that more thoroughly or more quickly, by "flagging" posts for moderators' attention.
We also sometimes suspend a user's account -- though on this site there appears to be no hard rule about when, how often, or for how long.

I'm not sure about your "already keeping a log of his behavior". It is more of a figure of speech and taking note for future reference in order to make a convincing case.

when are next moderator elections?

Not soon, is my guess: there weren't many candidates for the recent attempt at an election.

Howcome one moderator isn't enough to suspend a person? Is this standard policy for the network? I thought any mod could do it at any time and it is up to the user to appeal the ban which i think is appropriate placing for the burden of proof.

"How come one moderator...?" The software would let any one moderator do that. I think moderators should work together though, agree with each other's actions, I might ask the other moderators what they think before I take action. "Is this standard...?" I'm not a moderator of other sites. I think it's normal (with some exceptions where a moderator acts unilaterally where other moderators disagree). Each site has a private chat room for its moderators. "It is up to the user to appeal the ban..." My guess is that site's moderators decisions are final: that in theory they can be appealed...

... and that in practice SE doesn't have time to investigate the claims of every disgruntled user, and in my opinion is unlikely to reverse the decisions of site moderators (I think there would be some policy in place for a quorum of moderators to complain about another moderator). Basically it's the other moderators, not SE, who are a line-of-defence against a moderator's abuse-of-power (your post on Meta for example is seen by all site moderators) -- and the site's high-reputation users, who can see (therefore discuss) deleted posts and edit history.

If the user in question is one of the site's "highest-reputation" users, that's some objective evidence (by SE metrics) that they're not only prolific but also often helpful or useful -- welcome.

I think the main guiding principle here should be long term thinking. This community is bigger than any one person, as i said in general but i will now speak specifically about our friend.
Afaik he is in late middle stage of his life. Therefore;

I give him 30 more years for lifespan.

of these he will be active here 4/5 due to his persistence. 24 years of participation.
of these 1/5 he will be straight banned. 20 years of participation.
of these 20 years of participation, 1/5 will be offensive posts that will require deletion. We are left with 16 years of acceptable participation.
of these 20 years of participation, another 1/5 will be flagged or heavily downvote even tho found to be within TOS on that occasion. We are left with 12 years of content that is just 'not heavily downvoted'.
of these 12 years of not utter garbage about 1/3 or 1/4 will have a net positive score.

We are left with 3-4 years of mediocre content at best!
This user's expected contribution is miniscule and in no way worth the cost of dealing with an annoying person for 30 years, having a built in deterent against experts and have this scarecrow build reputation that can make this site and the moderators look bad for another 1000 years.
If you know him then it is obvious that he goes after knowledgeable people or more so active users in general. However he is mostly focused on the top posters and there are theories in the community about why this is.
I have moderators on DW tell me that there is also no consensus on banning him but some think he goes after knowledgeable users because they can challenge and make him look bad. I think the reason as to his motivation doesn't really matter and it's all bad no matter how we look at it.
People should really give thought to the organization of Internet Buddhist community. It is to me obviously not healthy and will eventually have to change.
This is a far cry from a close call and is something that should be nipped in the bud asap.
I also suspect that there is more to this outlier specimen and people who protect him here & elsewhere from being banned.
Buddhist internet communities are now fairly evolved as to amount of knowledge that is content. It is very important that content is well organized for future reference and our era's knowledge documented as best as possible.

compare 3-4 years of washed up content to deterring only 1 knowledgeable let alone expert that is in his 30s or 40s. you are trading 3-4 years of mediocre at best for 30-40 years of good to amazing.

i will probably milk this to the extent of quitting eventually. It is not a threat but i doubt i will bother if i have alternatives or am a monk. If i ordain i wouldn't participate with him around for sure. It is bad because i lose out on having a community and the community loses on having me. I never been banned and many posts have net positive rating.

I would go to SC but there is a person analogue to him there and it is also Sujato's own place and i let him do his thing there like i let Yuttadhammo on his site.

This feels like the only communally moderated gathering and it would be a shame if was easily subverted. If it looks subverted and talks subverted then it is probably subverted y'know and no growth can be expected.


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Is it appropriate for the same person to ask a question on the site and then use another account to answer it and mark it as answered?
It would appear that the person who asked this question using the account 'Alex Ryan' proceeded to answer his own question with another account 'Maitreya' and marked his own answer as correct. Is this appropriate? He also seems insistent on spreading an off-topic link to controversial covid treatments.
The evidence this is the case comes from two comments which both accounts used that occurred within minutes of each other that stemmed from an attempt to remove irrelevant and  controversial link about alternative covid treatments.
Here are screenshots of the comments:

Compared to:

The links are: What is the substantial cause of an instance of consciousness? and 3 marks of existence: conditioned vs unconditioned things?
The poster in question 'Alex Ryan' is insistent to post the same covid misinformation in spurious places on this site: https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/36652/13375

Thanks. It appears that Maitreya may be a sock puppet account of Alex Ryan. I'm also watching closely to remove or edit all posts of the user's personal website links that contain Covid19 misinformation and some off-topic conspiracy theories. If you see any comments with those links, please flag it. Thanks.

If this is actually happening, no, it is not appropriate.
As mentioned here by a former Stack Exchange employee

Answering your own questions with the other account(s)

I have no reason to believe that policy has changed on this matter.
In addition, posting links to sites without disclosing affiliation (unless it's something where it is blatantly obvious that you almost certainly didn't write or own the site, such as linking to a famous news site) is spam, and posting irrelevant links that do disclose affiliation should be edited out, and if it continues a moderator can suspend the user for continued low quality contributions, if they want too.


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Could Andrei Volkov stop complaining about me?
I have no idea what is bugging them, I've said nothing offensive and they keep complaining I'm a "lost cause".
It's not like they're my teacher, or even that we practice with the same tradition etc..
I've enjoyed lots of their answers, but I find this behaviour unhelpful.

Alright, I will stop if that's what you want.
At first I wanted to simply ignore your questions/answers - but then I thought that perhaps I should apply some compassion and try to engage, however hopeless you appear - but now I see that you interpret my helpful hand as offence. It's okay I guess, not everyone can be helped.

i'm not offended, i just find it helpful. it's fine

I think it was "lost case" (like a koan), not "cause", for what that's worth.
On both occasions (this was the second I've seen recently) that was in reply to comment of yours, where you criticised an answer or a comment -- recently,

this is not very informative without references etc., it just reads like just so stories
Like I said, lost case. I will leave this answer for the sake of other people then.

I didn't read Andrei's reply as "started complaining about you" -- I read it as a decision not to address your criticism by posting an addition or correction. And maybe that's right since this site is meant to be for answerable questions, not for discussions (nor arguments).
Incidentally Andrei posted this meta-answer a while ago -- about references etc.
And there were some references in a previous answer here.
I think it takes a bit of effort to ask a good question, effort to write an answer, and effort to ask a good follow-up question in a comment.
You might read this Help topic especially When should I comment? and When shouldn't I comment?
If I do "request clarification from the author" then I think I tend to phrase my comment as a specific question, with a question mark -- not a comment like, "this answer wasn't very informative."

it's not an isolated case, he's encouraging people to be hostile to me

As I wrote: I see "lost" in a comment, on two occasions, they were both in a similar situation. If someone is hostile to you, you can "flag" that for a moderator's attention. Still I (personally) recommend that you (that everyone, in fact) be careful when you comment on what other people's posts (including Andrei's): perhaps go out of your way to be polite ... and/or avoid commenting.

i am being polite, but if someone makes an unclear or unreferenced reply to my question -- ESPECIALLY if they seem to be correcting something i said -- i think i should downvote and leave a comment why

and i'm not going to "report" every comment by someone that took offense to that and wants to reinforce their sense of superiority

@sorta_buddhist When my brother and I used to complain to my mum about each other, she'd tell us that we both had to "stop it". And that's what I'm telling you -- i.e. that you have to stop it. and i'm not going to "report" every comment You can but you don't have to. I generally read every comment whether it's flagged or not. But it's better to delete any hostile comments, a) to stop arguments and b) to make the site more pleasant for other readers.

The problem is that people use the site to show off their esoteric awareness of reality, so that when you point out their answer is unclear or poorly referenced, they think you're insulting their attainments or wisdom.


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Can Andrei stop deleting perfectly reasonable answers?
How could we possibly have an infinity of past lives?
There i posted a perfectly reasonable answer which was deleted because allegedly 'not Buddhist enough'. That answer is on point tho, logically flawless and can be substantiated by the Pali Sutta. I can literally substantiate every paragraph there and show that it is in line with the texts known to be true and what is known as truth in the world.
Surely it is due to lack of competence that this Andrei Volkov is deleting answers like these. His incompetence is also evident from his own entirely opinion based answer to that question which is at odds with the interpretation commonly accepted among theravadins i can also easily falsify it using the Sutta. This is not an ad-hominen but an allegation i am willing to back up.
How about i do both the substantiation of my answer and falsification of your theories so that you can stop moderating Andrei? Even tho you could not and would not do do the same thing as in falsifying my answer and substantiating yours, I wouldn't mind doing it because clearly here you are completely unqualified and lest you cease & desist i won't bother posting here anyway because such moderation is hopeless.
If Andrei wants to on a whim censor answers he doesn't like or agrees with and furthermore to use this service to spread his own otherwise sectarian views, that is fine but you should make it more clear as to avoid giving the impression that this is a platform where pali canon is authoritative.

There i posted a perfectly reasonable answer etc.
If you want my opinion (you might not) I thought the answer didn't start well ...

First of all a beginning point would run contrary to what can be known of conservation laws.

... I guessed that was referencing "laws" of Physics -- "conservation of energy" etc.
The second paragraph is about "philosophically unacceptable".
The third is a little unintelligible -- with its "begetting". And I don't know about "phenomena are gaining a footing" -- what scripture is that a reference to, and what does it have to do with answering the question?
The fourth, "bigger infinities" sounds to me like Maths again. Then the next two one-sentence paragraphs paint a thought experiment of one or two people telling infinitely many stories, but I don't know why.
The third-last is comparing the sizes of infinity again. And it's not typical Maths thinking ...? Yes, I think I see now -- but only now that I reread it and puzzled over it 4 or 5 times -- i.e. that you're trying to explain your understanding of how something (i.e. the OP's "reaching wisdom and buddahood") may or may not have happened yet within two infinite story-lines.
The second last is an interesting theory but possibly speculation. The last sounds like philosophy again ("epistemologically falsified").

I guess there are (in your mind) parallels with the doctrine. And perhaps what you wrote doesn't contradict doctrine.
The references (to doctrine) weren't really clear though.
I didn't delete your answer myself -- but Andrei chose to and it's not entirely a wrong decision. If you'd like to edit the answer to make it more obvious that it's at least in part based on doctrine then perhaps that edit would make it "surely" on-topic.
Also it's possible that Andrei and I disagree -- he wanted this policy,

All or major (or 'important') parts of the answer

But instead I thought we had to be content with a policy that said an answer would be on topic (and not deleted even if it's wrong) if any of it were clearly based on or attempting to relate to Buddhist doctrine:

because being stricter than that would be difficult to moderate seemingly-impartially i.e. in a way that everyone (including e.g. you here) agrees with as fair
and partly because if that were the policy then some people might complain that Andrei's own answers too were "non-Buddhist", because they are unreferenced.

Surely it is due to lack of competence ...
Let's not go there.

his own entirely opinion based answer to that question
His answer might be wrong (I don't believe it is wrong) and not well-referenced (which is permissible even if we'd prefer a reference).
The way it starts ...

As I understand, the Buddha meant that

... implies that the answer is obviously meant to be based. You might wonder whether it's true or not -- you might think it's a wrong or mistaken answer -- but anyway I'm pretty sure it's evidently an answer related to Buddhism and not e.g. based on semi-modern theories about Physics etc.
i can also easily falsify it using the Sutta
If you think the answer contradicts the doctrine then a polite and specific comment to say so or to ask about that,  might be the right response ("isn't your saying X in this answer contradicted by sutta Y?"").
A moderator is meant to delete an answer not for being wrong but for being off-topic i.e. an answer that's not obviously based on Buddhism.
This is not an ad-hominen but an allegation i am willing to back up
I see it as two slightly different topics, i.e.

whether your answer is "explicitly Buddhist enough"
whether Andrei's answer is whatever you want it to be

How about i do both
Or let's keep it simple, one thing at a time.

I posted as a separate answer

I can surely amend my answer with references. In brief;
Phenomena gaining a footing is reference based on mn49 & an10.58.
'Fuel for a future' example is clearly an explaination of iti.2.17;38 in regard to OP's question.
The conservation laws relation to the Dhamma and sutta referenced in OP, is basic logic and this obvious relation can be inferred from what is quite well explained by Bhikkhu Samahita here https://youtu.be/1M2tj4S4j4I
If not sufficient i can explain it in more detail complete with more sutta references.
As for infinity explainations i gave examples based on a thought experiment not related to mathematics but first example involving a case of parinibbana (ref above) and another based on simple simple reasoning with numbers which a child could understand. This is so that people capable of reasoning may be able to see the flawed understanding of infinity which prompted OPs question. As you yourself were able to see i was as a matter of fact showing proof that infinity doesn't imply that all must have happened.
As for the argument against a beginning, that was purely philosophical reasoning which shows that there can be no beginning point, this constitutes a reasonable support for the Sutta referenced in OP.
In conclusion i was on point the entire time and in many ways showed to the OP why Buddha's statement referenced was true and how he can think about it so that it might become agreeable.
Furthermore one can't dismiss philosophical reasoning because that is basically a dismissal of logic.
This is a grave mistake on Andrei's part and also evidence of incompetence, i can as i said make full analysis of my answer and explain in detail what was referenced in this post in brief and to furthermore falsify his answer. As i see it it's not even up for debate at this point, he is clueless.

Anyway im not going to bother answering more questions here. This incompetence is a complete nuisance and i don't need this shit.

The point of the exercise would be to improve the answer (i.e. incorporate these references into the answer), not to post them on Meta. That (editing my answer) is what I did when users asked me to do that (discussed here). Also "logic" is something but not enough, not the point of the site -- e.g. if someone asks "does God exist?" (or any other question) then on this site an answer based on Buddhist doctrine would be on-topic and an answer based on logic isn't ... logic isn't enough.

That's not unlike other SE sites -- e.g. on Skeptics.SE an answer based on logic is off-topic and deleted, instead an answer on that site must be based on peer-reviewed references (published evidence).

simple simple reasoning with numbers which a child could understand Children don't understand "infinity". Various silly paradoxes can be derived from naively comparing infinities, so I am trained (I don't know whether Andrei is too) to mistrust that kind of reasoning. On this site I'd like an explanation of Buddhist doctrine, not of infinities. I also tend to delete answers talking about other non-Buddhist religions too -- because that's off-topic and not what the users of this site are supposed to be expert about.

it's not even up for debate at this point Well I'll stop posting/replying on this subject in that case.

This is getting stupid. If you want to take logic out of Buddhism, disconnecting it from experimental physics and mathematics then you will have a fictional religion akin to scientology that does noyhing to explain how that which can be thought about works. I shouldn't have to do any exercises to not have my answers censored because some self proclaimed fully enlightened being doesn't understand them. I do not post for imbeciles, i post for smart people and if other people don't understand it well that's too bad for them. Im not going to simplify until Andrei gets it, i simply have no time.

I will make a last comment; children can be Arahants so they would obviously understand the implications of infinity therein. Therefore children can understand infinity according to the Dhamma

FYI I usually include a sutta reference when I answer. I figure that if someone doesn't understand an answer I write, at least the referenced sutta might be helpful reading.

I abide by terms of service, you can do as you see fit.

On the subject of infinity, by the way, Maths not Buddhism -- your comment that "the 'number of numbers greater than 1' is bigger than the 'number of numbers greater than 2'" doesn't match my understanding -- my understanding i.e. as I was taught it is more like, "Take two rulers both infinitely long and place them side-by side. Move one slightly so its 0 is next to the other's 1. Counter-intuitively one is not now longer than the other i.e. they're both still equally and infinitely long in both directions."

They are not equal to one another, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the two sets, there is no match for every number in both sets is what is meant. The first set matches every number of the second set but not the other way around, they are therefore not equal in that.

I don't believe that's true: because "for every number N in the first set there's a corresponding N-1 in the second -- and for every N in the second there's a corresponding N+1 in the first". Also I was taught that one can prove, in the same way, that the number of even integers (i.e. evenly divisible by 2) is equal to the number of integers! Because for every N there's a corresponding N×2 ... there is no N which doesn't have a corresponding N×2, and therefore the number of integers doesn't exceed the number of even numbers because one can define a one-to-one mapping between them.

Similarly the number of "rational" numbers (e.g. "two thirds", "two fifths", "three sevenths", etc.) can be mapped to the natural numbers therefore they -- the rational numbers and the natural numbers -- are the same kind of infinity, though that's surprising (because there are infinitely many rational numbers between each pair of natural umbers e.g. between 1 and 2. But there are more irrational numbers than there are rational numbers for some reason (there's a proof for that which I don't immediately remember). So "infinities" in number theory can be taught to a child but are off-topic IMHO.

Yes my expression was wrong but my point is true. Even tho the cardinality is the same which is the amount of elements in the sets, the intervals are different. So you are correct in saying that the amount of elements in the intervals is equal but i am correct because i am talking about determining the size of the set rather than counting elements therein and one interval will be greater than another.

As i understand it you are splitting the interval into infinite amount elements to count whilst i am measuring the interval itself to define it's size by measure.

Does Buddhist doctrine even talk about "infinite" or "infinity" in the sense that the OP asked? Instead, one quote might be about, "a beginning is not evident". Maybe "being are numberless" doesn't appear until/except in the Mahayana bodhisattva vows.

As i understand it you are splitting the interval into infinite blocks I was taught that to compare two infinite sets, you (i.e. a student mathematician) have to consider whether it's theoretically possible to define any one-to-one mapping between the elements of the two sets -- and if there is such a mapping then the sets are said to have the same "order" aka cardinality.

It does talk about it both as cardinality ie 'monks, which is greater the amount of tears you shed wandering on or the water in the ocean?'. In terms of measure there is the measure of 'one incalculable aeon', 'two..', 'three ...' Not to mention the implications of parinibbana as exhausting fuel for a future which defines the set for beings who attain it.

So one who attains parinibbana first will measure a smaller interval to another.

I still think it might be hard to measure "interval", when "a beginning isn't evident". And would you say that comparing i.e. "one to another" might be some form of a "conceit"?

I think the correct expression would be an interval which can be grasped with wrong view as personal for this or that being. I don't think conceit has to do with it and the personal pronoun is a convention. Like one would differentiate between internal and external elements. The beginning is inconstruable but the extinguishment is an end.

Anwith this i'll suspend my participation. I appreciate your input and wish you good fortune.


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Looks now as if comments are reserved for what they shouldn't and shouldn't for what they should be used, or?
Of course, like always a "free to make of it what ever" obervation...
If looking through the comments one would find long, long talks where mods are involved, or main feeders, while, if critic or pointing out errors are fast censured. Maybe a special BSE-rule.
But shure some might wish to express good observed attained opinions, or?

Not allowed
I deleted several of your comments recently.

These were comments under people's answers, which seemed to be criticism of the person answering the question -- and/or which weren't relevant to the OP's question.
Criticising people contradicts the Code of Conduct which says,

Focus on the content, not the person.

Similarly I also tend to delete comments which criticise BSE -- e.g. which criticise the existence of the site itself, and the fact that some people use it.

Allowed

You also posted some short comments which seem intended as a partial answer to the OP's question.
In theory those would be better posted as answers instead of as a comment -- but because they're on-topic (i.e. posted to answer the OP's question, and not critical of other users personally), I haven't been deleting those.

I generally don't mind how long a comment is. I mostly only want it to be on-topic i.e. relevant to the OP's question, and non-hostile i.e. not criticising the people who are posting. And if you have a lot to say about a topic then post that as an answer instead of comments.

Look at the topic of what is uncensured left now: talks... An before? Critics for improvements. So again: what they are for? Everywhere, in all topics, critical points, no matter how right, are censured and Mods and means talks remain, crorrect if wrong. Maybe good to turn that proper, if wishing.

The purpose of the site is to answer the OP's question (and with a minimum of "blame" or controversy). Users can post a comment which tries to clarify an answer to the OP's question -- but not post a comment which attempts to criticise the person asking or answering.

That's Nyoms idea... peopl like right answers and they usually care less about people, so do SE. Wake upthat SE has another purpose as to gain the most from you... And the Chris-politic does neither fit to one or the other, but is actually after that what he says he likes to hinder...: entertaining and socializing. That what remains.


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Is it permissible to answer your own question by synthesizing answers from others?
According to the rules of this site as I understand it, we are encouraged not to post questions and then answer ourselves. However, I wonder if it is permissible to provide an answer which is a synthesis of other's answers.
Specifically, in this question I think there are many great parts to each answer, but find that no one answer is sufficient. I'm wondering it is permissible or advised to provide my own answer which is effectively a synthesis of the other answers with some minor tweaks along the way.
The original question was motivated by a request for elaboration on another answer and I think the best help would be a synthesis of the answers.

I think that would be welcome.
As I remember it the policy was that own-answers to a question are especially permitted if they're based on research which you hadn't already done when you asked the question -- synthesising answers would certainly qualify for that -- or if someone does it very rarely.
The purpose was to keep the (collaborative) Q&A nature of the site -- discourage people using it as their personal blog -- and ensure that the topic is one which users other than the OP might want to see answered.

According to the rules of this site as I understand it, we are encouraged not to post questions and then answer ourselves.

Actually it isn't a rule but even against the sites philosophy and a product of mood many years ago, maintained as "reality" by some.
There is hardly any Q&A community which seeks not for possible all ways to get an answer and who if not a questioner, after a good research, could possible provide a better in certain cases.
Of course it's not easy to give up a perception especially if a lot of wrong doing was in connection with it.
PS: Good householder is welcome to give his own answer to his question here as well, like moderators usually do as well and foremost.
[Note that this isn't given trade exchange, stacks or to maintain unskillful perceptions in ways that they are hold for real but for liberation for sticking to unwise and harmful]